Activate and configure Document IDs in a site collection

Document IDs help you manage your documents by providing an easy way to track items regardless of their location. For example, if a legal contract gets moved from one document library to an archive library on another site, the contract retains its Document ID. You can use the Document ID to easily locate the archived contract. Document ID’s are automatically assigned to uploaded documents and this ID will follow the item throughout its whole life cycle. Document IDs can also be assigned to Document Sets.

Activate, enable, and configure Document IDs

To use Document IDs to track documents or records, you must first activate the feature in the site collection.

Activate the Document ID site collection feature

Note: In order enable the Document ID feature, you must be a site collection administrator.

Go to the top-level site or site collection.

Click Settings
and then click Site Settings.

In a SharePoint group-connected site, click Settings
, then click Site Contents, and then click Site Settings.

Under Site Collection Administration, click Site collection features.

Next to Document ID Service click Activate. An Active icon appears next to the item and the feature is activated for the current site collection.

Enable and configure Document IDs in a site collection

When you enable the Document ID feature for any given site collection, all documents in the site collection are automatically assigned a Document ID. The number of documents in the site collection affects how long this process takes to complete...

Note: In order to enable and configure the Document ID feature, you must be a site collection administrator.

Go to the top-level site or site collection.

Click Settings
and then click Site Settings.

In a SharePoint group-connected site, click Settings
, then click Site Contents, and then click Site Settings.

Under Site Collection Administration, click Document ID settings.

On the Document ID settings page, in the Assign Document IDs section, verify that there is a check mark in the Assign Document IDs, check box.

Note: When you enable Document IDs in a site collection, you'll receive the following message: Configuration of the Document ID feature is scheduled to be completed by an automated process. The time it takes for this process depends on the number of documents in your site collection.

To set a custom string of characters or numbers that are automatically appended to the beginning of each Document ID, enter the string under Begin IDs with…

Select the Reset all Document IDs… check box if you want to automatically add the prefix to all existing Document IDs in your site collection.

In the Document ID Lookup Search Scope sections, select the sites to use as the search scope for ID lookup.

Click OK.

When you enable Document IDs for a site collection, a column is added to the Document and Document Sets Content Types at the site collection level. The ID assigned to an item appears in the Document ID column. Find the Document ID in the details pane of the document library.

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Updated April 25, 2018

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